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Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Neat Post!

The following appeared today on the SolidCopyCW e-mail reflector. It was posted by Art, K4IRS.I liked it so much that I'm sharing it here!

CW - The Great Communicator by Art Burke, K4IRS

While reading the post about 10 reasons to enjoy code,I remembered a recent episode I thought I'd like toshare with the group. If I did so already, my apologies.

Several months ago, there was a DXpedition to St. Paul Island (up in Canada - they used CY9SS). I only had it on a couple of bands and worked moderately hard to get as many more bands/modes as possible.

One day one of the ops came up on 12 meters, a pretty tough band these days, with the sunspots down in the doldrums, but he was working nothing but RTTY. At the time I had no equipment to work digital modes, so I sat there, frustrated that I couldn't get into the foray and earn another band/country for the Challenge.

An idea suddenly gleamed and I could only hope for the best. The operator was working "split," transmitting on one frequency and listening 2 or 3 kHz higher. It's a very common technique for handling the pileup, regardless of the current mode. I moved my transmit frequency up near where the other hams were sending and turned on the "decode" function on my radio. Several radios on the market now have this capability. I was using a 746 Pro at the time and the 756 Pro series can do it as well.

I set one VFO on RTTY and turned on the decoder so I could see what the DX station was sending. On the other VFO, which I was using as my transmit VFO, I set the mode for CW. Each time the DX station would complete a RTTY QSO and send QRZ? I would sendmy call in CW, around 15 wpm and mentally cross my fingers.

About the sixth or seventh time I did this, the DX station sent "K4IRS K4IRS OK 599 599" and I sent, in CW,"599 599 K4IRS" and the DX station sent"K4IRS QSL QRZ up 3" SUCCESS!

Obviously, had the DX station not also known CW, he might very well have heard my signal, but not made heads or tails out of it. A couple of months later, I had the QSL!